The last couple of days have been rather warm with hints of spring in the air. Andrew and I took a walk around the neighborhood and then played in the backyard. He seemed to be having a fun time after being cooped up in the house for the last three months.

I took these videos with my cell phone and the quality is pretty bad. That’s not even considering what Vimeo does to them to making them streamable… Even so, it’s nice to be able to put videos up for everyone to see.

Gina, the boys and I just got back from our yearly ski trip to Loon Mountain up in Lincoln, NH. We stayed at the Mountain Club with Ed, Tyler, Mike, Lisa, Nic, Kirstin, Bobby and Nicholas right on the mountain. It was great being able to walk right out of the hotel doors and get in the lift lines.

The weather was great as it snowed all day Friday and the mountain got about 6″ of fresh powder. Saturday and Sunday were perfect mixes of sun and cool (but not cold) weather. Andrew tried skiing again on the bunny slopes and did a pretty good job. I think he’s still a year or two away from being a bona fide skier, but he’s getting used to having the planks strapped to his feet and might be ready for a group lesson or two next year.

Speaking of learning to ski, Bobby really deserves the “Super Trooper” award for tagging along with us on some of the summit trails on his second day of skiing ever. By the end of the trip, he was doing quite well despite Nicolette’s playful nagging and teasing and a ton of “yard sales”.

Nicholas, Tyler and Andrew all enjoyed the pool for the entire weekend. In fact, the pool was the highlight of the trip for them leaving us to wonder if it would’ve been easier to just get a weekend pass to the YMCA pool in Worcester… Add the fact that while in the hotel room they mainly played the XBox 360 it almost seemed like the winter sports where an afterthought.

At the end of it all, Gina and I both enjoyed our time and vacation but we were (not so) secretly wishing for the day to come where we could take off on our own and get a couple of runs in together while the kids were busy on their own. We’ve already booked our rooms for 2014 when we figure we’ll be about ready to be able to do that.

Indian food, a new episode of Lost and a snuggle on the couch.

Just about perfect.

Love ya, hon!

Andrew, Josh and I have been hanging out at home as Gina works her way through her busy schedule at the hospital.  Having the boys at home with me has been entertaining and a little challenging as both of them have been sick with a cold.

Andrew’s hacking cough hasn’t slowed him down very much, but he sounds a bit like I imagine the Marlboro man did on his death bed.  Josh seems to have been hit a little harder with the bug as he’s been congested and coughing a fair amount.  It’s a little unsettling knowing that the little guy can’t blow his nose or clear his throat, but I have mastered the art of the suction bulb over the last few days.  He’s been getting a fair amount of sleep as well which seems to help.

I never knew playing Mr. Mom was going to revolve so much around snot…

Earlier today, as Andrew was playing, I heard him rip a fart and start chuckling to himself. I asked him what was so funny and he replies, “My butt was giggling!” Absolutely. Priceless.

Later, we were talking about Matt and Abbey possibly getting a dog and Andrew said he’d like to to get a real dog too. Playing along, I asked him what would be name the dog. He thought about it earnestly for a couple of seconds and then replied, “Daddy, I would call him Poo Poo Snowflake.” Yup, that’s my son!

This weekend we were supposed to have Joshua’s christening at Our Lady of the Angels church in Worcester. Months ago, we booked the date with the priest, made arrangements to have the party afterwards at Lisa’s and ordered all the food from work. When 1pm rolled around on Saturday, forty of our closest friends and family met at the church to see Josh get dunked on the alter. After about 10 minutes, we realized something was wrong when the priest wasn’t around and nothing was set up in the church. We called the rectory, the priest himself and even the priest’s mother (he goes way back on my Mom’s side of the family) but we couldn’t find him anywhere…

Because of a few out of town guests, including the godfather Nate who flew in from New Orleans for the weekend, we were committed to having the ceremony one way or another this weekend. Robin, Josh’s godmother, saved the day by calling her parish, pulling a few strings and having Fr. Foley do the ceremony on the fly. He was a great sport and did an excellent ceremony under the circumstances. Josh was a trooper and didn’t even flinch when he had the water poured over his head. It also turned out that Fr. Foley grew up in the same neighborhood as my dad and his family back in the day so there was some connection that made it all the more entertaining.

When we finally finished, everyone headed up to Lisa’s in Paxton for the party. It seemed as though everyone had a great time and really enjoyed themselves. It turned out to be a great day for the whole ordeal after all.

Because of all the craziness associated with the day, Gina and I didn’t get a chance to take too many pictures. Fortunately, there were quite a few taken by the usual photogs like my dad, Matt and Nate. I’ve added a couple of the better ones to the Flickr pool so be sure to check them out.

Ever since getting our new Nikon D40 as an early Christmas present, we’ve been taking a ton of pictures.  The problem is, we still haven’t found the best way to manage them and share the good ones with people we know.  Typically, we’ll copy the photos off of the camera onto Gina’s laptop via Picasa.  After Gina sorts them, they get uploaded to PicasaWeb and after that we email people with a link to the new album.  It works, but it’s pretty time consuming, IMHO.  On top of that, we’ll print from DotPhoto once a month and have to go through the uploading process once again…

With the blog back to being current, I searched for a widget that’d work with Wordpress and Picasa and came up surprisingly short.  The FlickrRSS one seemed popular and it was easy to configure in Wordpress so that’s what is working on the sidebar.  I figure I can upload a “best of” photo stream to Flickr and share some of our better pictures here on the blog.   Flickr also seems to have some decent integration with places that print photos, including Target.  We’ll have to check that out one of these days…

In an effort to get a little more in shape, I just started the “Couch Potato to 5K” running plan from the Coolrunning.com site.  It’s designed to get someone like me off their ass and on the the roads or treadmill.  I’ll be using the latter since Gina and I bought the new treadmill from Smooth Fitness last year and really haven’t put a whole lot of miles on it.  Plus, it’s been like 5°F out the last few days and the roads are covered with ice and snow.  I also found a cool podcast that goes with the running program on iTunes.  I figure the coaching aspect as well as some new music might be the edge to sticking with the program.

With any luck, by the time the spring rolls around I can be jogging regularly again and maybe start doing something about being fat and pasty.  Honestly, that’s so 2007.  It’s only logical that I try and record my progress here so hopefully I’ll be able to do that and not come up short.

I took this video this morning as Joshua was getting ready to eat some cereal. He was in a great mood! Every day we’re seeing more and more of his great personality.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be a little more timely in my updates, as well as recruit Gina to take over some of the posting duties. We’ve often talked about how great this would be to keep relatives or far away friends updated on what the kids are doing as well as some of the things we’re up to.

Over the past couple of years this blogging thing has come in fits and starts so I’m really going to try and be a little more on top of things. One of the things that has really turned me back on is the ability to post up video (via something like Youtube or Vimeo) to let people see how the kids are growing up. I’m looking into that as a real possibility.

Anyways, more to come…